Christa Ackroyd: Theresa May's departure and the whole Brexit debacle is a crying shame

It would appear not, or rather nothing that couldn’t have been predicted, sadly.

Fortunately the Internet in Cuba is sporadic at best, but from what I can glean we are as far away from sorting out the mess that is Brexit than we have ever been.

Apart from the fact that (at the time of going to press) nine Tory MPs now fancy their chances as the next leader and Jeremy Corbyn still can’t decide what he really wants, apart from a general election.

Oh and heaven forbid, the man who got us into this mess with a referendum he thought he couldn’t lose, one David Cameron, according to ‘friends’ now plans a possible comeback to solve the crisis he created in the first place by walking away within hours of finding out he had gambled and lost.

That Nigel Farage and his new Brexit Party with the same old arguments won the most seats in the European elections we were never meant to have is unsurprising considering the debacle we have witnessed these past three years, which, no matter how you voted in the referendum, has sickened the nation.

Nigel Farage is a staggeringly articulate politician, but heaven help us if we are steamrollered towards a no-deal conclusion because we can’t be bothered to debate it any more. Apathy should never rule.

During these last three years politicians have lost a grip on what matters in this country.

Food banks have become a lifeline to those whose new system of benefits have been delayed to the point of desperation.

Soldiers who fought the enemy, which is what the IRA were, have been warned they could face retrospective prosecutions.

Charities feed the homeless on our streets and a Panorama documentary uncovered shocking abuse of the most vulnerable members of our society eight years after it was promised it would never happen again.

In Barnsley the strongest woman I have met, Claire Throssell, whose two sons were murdered by a husband she was forced to allow unsupervised access to, feels let down after a sympathetic response was made in person by a Prime Minister who indicated she would support a public inquiry to review a system which is patently a potential danger to children everywhere. Then she announced it wouldn’t happen.

Brexit has been all-consuming to the detriment of important issues which need tackling here. And now.

No wonder Theresa May cried last week.

She has made many mistakes these past three years, not least in believing she could unite a party as split down the middle as the country.

But at least she was the only one willing to try. Yes she should have sought an all-party consensus from day one and if Labour and her own party had refused to compromise, so be it.

She should never have called a snap election which she had no reason to call.

Would Margaret Thatcher have done the same if she had had a clear majority, or come back to the house over and over again as time was running out with the same deal she had no hope of getting through?

No she would have just got on with it, believing that was what she was tasked with.

Having said, that the ridiculous comments made by some commentators last week after the Prime Minister’s tearful announcement she would be leaving in ten days time that she should have shown that kind of emotion during her tenure were a complete nonsense.

Her enemies, and there were plenty on both sides of the house, would have simply branded her weak at a time when they were demanding she should toughen up during the impossible negotiations with the EU.

As for the headline in one newspaper on the day I left the country which urged her husband to tell her it was time to go, what a patronising insult.

One day we might know the real truth about what Mrs May really feels about those who plotted against her from day one. And, unlike the memoirs penned by her predecessor, that is one book I would be willing to buy.

Until then everything else is a crying shame.